NYT promotes questionable study on Google and the media
cjr.org
cjr.org
On one hand, you can’t make this stuff up. A “competition” bill that exempts companies from competition laws. On the other hand, this is the problem with the “content middleman” business. By leveraging its near monopoly over eyeballs, Google can negotiate to receive an outsized share of the revenues from people viewing say NYT content, relative to the value Google adds to the transition.
That is also why I welcome the rise of competition in movie/TV streaming, even if it means subscribing to multiple services. The value added by any particular streaming service is pretty minimal. (Except for Netflix original content, Netflix is streaming say NBC’s content from Amazon’s servers over Verizon’s wires to an app using video codecs developed by Sony/etc.) Netflix, etc., isn’t adding nothing, there is a value to the curation and licensing deals, but it’s status as a middleman would allow it to wrestle a much larger share of the profit from the transaction than the share of value it adds.
Also I have a hard time feeling sorry for the traditional press. They spend decades killing their own reputation and now paying the price. They could have had web sites so reputable, so popular, that they would have been the news hub. Instead they turned internet into the bad guy, kept publishing political agendas and sensasionalist headlines and hoped we would suck it up as we did when they were king of the hill.
No matter how good I think netflix is, and despite their now long and good track record, they are entering a new fight bare handed against machine guns.
And Disney doesn't own all the content. Netflix need only be the streaming provider other content makers choose.
I don't expect the GAFAM to play fair. They are going to arm wrest the industry to go through them.
But they own about half (Disney Studios, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Pixar, 20th Century Fox, Searchlight, NatGeo, and I am sure I forgot a dozen others), and they might never licence it to a "competitor" again unless they are forced to do under some sort of FRAND unbundling of content and distribution.
As a middleman, Netflix is great for the customer though - no need to have a half-dozen sign-ins and always need to remember which service has which series.
In other words, I think you're the opposite of right on competition on the Netflix front. A monopoly interface adds significant value and Netflix isn't currently able to gouge the customer - the studios do that instead.
> One of the most glaring omissions from the report, mentioned by a number of media-industry observers, is the ad revenue newspapers generate from the pageviews they get via Google News and Google search. The search company says publishers get more than 10 billion clicks every month (the value of which differs depending on the publisher). When asked for comment, the NMA tells CJR the purpose of the report was to look at how much Google benefits from news, not the opposite.
Uh, so it sounds like Google deserves a cut of the ad revenue directed via Google News then.
Man, there's no trustworthy journalism left, is there?
"Well, it was a $2 mp3, and ~100M copies were downloaded, that's $2 * 100M = $200M in lost revenue/damages!!"
As if 1 download = 1 guaranteed lost sale. On the contrary sometimes 1 download = 1 future sale where there was none before!
By that logic the easiest way to make a million is just to download (or copy) a $1 mp3 1M times - congrats, you now own $1M in assets!
No. That's the easiest way to owe $1M.
Actual economics is far more complex than the simple supply/demand curve taught in 101 classes.
So your ipod 4th gen with 5000 songs is worth $750 million.
Linking to a "study" to validate a point is so easy and trivial. I can find studies that validate any position I need. But having "a study show" makes my argument seem truthful and academic. In that regard, "studies" seem to have a cargo cult where people happy collect and link to them but never bother to validate them.
Did they not bother to actually run the numbers by anyone at all? Did it being a "study" magically make it pure and true?
"Internet platform economics were going to swamp the majority of publishers no matter what—there is (almost) no market for their products any more; not because they couldn’t make one, but because that’s not how internet economics work."
Disclaimer - reporting is critically important and by and large journalists are doing their best to understand and describe incredibly complex and esoteric subjects. It's always good to remember there is a lot more nuance behind just about every story than surface level would indicate.
[1] - https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gell-Mann_amnesia_effect
No, by and large they absolutely aren’t doing their best. If they were the Gell-Mann amnesia effect wouldn’t be so prominent because it’s trivial to run stories by experts on topics. Most reporters are crunched for time and just churn out crap as fast as possible.
I think journalists are doing their best, but I think it's in specific niches. For example, when I read articles or see videos from "the tech press" I believe them. When I read an article on anandtech I don't have to think "this is what they're saying, but is it actually true?"
You should apply that same process to any article they publish even on statements you agree with but don't actually have full knowledge of. It is not they cannot afford editors it is that they are politically aligned and floating trial balloons for ideas spouted by favored candidates. We will have a flood of stories submitted that if you look under the covers are no more than talking points you can walk right back to a candidate.
Expect the upcoming year to be full of stories directed to make you think the whole process is unfair, how you have no voice, how your rights are being eroded, how someone or some company has wealth they don't deserve, but if you just hand it all over to the politicians they will fix it.
All they will do is secure their people into money making positions and sell you a bill of goods under a law with a nice sounding name that does very little of what it implies and a whole lot more under the covers you never would have wanted.
They have been running smear campaigns against tech companies for years and then act dumb and ask about the change in sentiment towards them.
> > Wherever per-person Facebook use rose to one standard deviation above the national average, attacks on refugees increased by about 50 percent.
> That sounds horrible, but it is actually a claim about variation across municipalities, not a claim about the absolute importance of the internet.
That's why they used the word "wherever," to emphasis that it was based on locality.
That seems to form the bulk of Mr Cowen's objection. The remainder appears to be recitation of the stock phrase "correlation is not causation," mock horror and snark about the methods the study used (Nutella! heaven forbid!), and expressing his general confusion about parts of the study he doesn't understand.
To my eyes, this doesn't appear to be a "comically erroneous study," unless, as Mr. Cowen does, you find great intrinsic humor in the concept of Nutella. Nor does the NYT reporting on it seem to misrepresent the study any more than articles for the layperson usually do.
“Out of their way” as in it’s difficult for them to support anything other than leftist views? Do you not see the problem there?
I ignored it for the most part, until I paid more attention to their hypocritical advertising, user tracking, and the unforgivable dark patterns they use to throttle unsubscribes - the state of residency feature flag for online unsubscribe / forcing the subscriber to hold on the phone for an hour before triaging them to a sales rep. Fuck you NYT.
They definitely have a point, without putting a tremendous effort into this, one must have to use very speculative mathematical extrapolation. Although I'm not sure whether it would ever be worth to put additional mathematical rigour into this because that would be a lot of work.
Speaking of myself, for many years Google News has been my starting point for using the internet and self-speaking for getting myself a news update. News sources have become replaceable and I was always thinking: oh nice, so I'm always reading articles from various sources/perspectives, so this must eliminate virtually all bias.
But what has happened in reality is this:
- many news companies closed down/were merged into other companies
- often agency news (Reuters, AP, ...) are copy&pasted into articles
- some online newspapers mostly put bot generated news that seems to be automatically assembled from agency news and correspondent's; the quality and readability of this is almost 0
So for me a tipping point has been reached and I switched back to going directly to news magazine/paper websites. Also I've subscribed to 2 paid subscriptions. I feel much better informed with more relevant information.
Makes ya wonder what other topics they're doing this with...
They're kind of maddening in some ways. They certainly do crap like that, but also still do some occasional really good investigative reporting.
I subscribed to the Washington Post, as it's cheap through Amazon and they seem to be doing a bit better job in some ways.
Doesn't seem all that different from the days of William Randolph Hearst.
And the above would be true even if Google News didn’t exist.
The media has incredibly sloppy thinking about their business model.
What monopoly prevents the post from managing their own ads? They choose not to.
News sites more or less must use amp to rank, I think, which means they need google adtech.
Could be wrong, not an expert, but it seems an actual legit critique the media could make.
Something something collective bargaining.
I don't mean some kind of innuendo racist, but someone with multiple tweets like this:
"Are <ethnic group> genetically predisposed to burn faster in the sun, thus logically being only fit to live underground like groveling goblins?"
The NYT excused this this as her way of "imitating the rhetoric" of those who were harassing her online.
I'm inclined to side with them because I think everyone ought to have the opportunity to address any of their past statements publicly before being condemned by "the paper of record".
However:
Anyone that's been paying attention to the news media knows that there is no way they would offer this opportunity or indulge this kind of a charitable interpretation. This article is likely proof of that, given that so many have not been offered the opportunity to comment on the way they/their videos have been represented.
I was aware of the original tweet a few years ago, but didn't know the context until now.
I haven't read the referenced article so I can't comment on whether it's a valid criticism or not. But it's clearly satirical.
The latter half of my comment deals with this - hint: I'm not opposed to people being given a chance to explain, or being charitable and permissive to all speech.
Or, put another way, how did the tech firms manage to become enemies with the liberals despite being on their side in the political battle?
The front page of Hacker News is pretty much a Google hate hangoutfest -- so maybe cut some slack on this one...
I'm sure the NYT reporter was not acting malicious.
Maybe they will even issue correction or update in time. No one would argue that speed of social media and corrections is not ideal, but I would bet they are trying to be accurate and transparent with their readers.
I just seriously doubt the reporter and editors who published this info did so solely with the goal to attack Google by "promoting" a questionable study.
Wrong/Lazy/Dumb != Evil
HN is not a newspaper. HN is an opinion-fest. NYT purports to be the "Newspaper of Record." Requiring NYT to publish corrections to factual error is utterly reasonable and has nothing to do with HN or Google in any way.
Oh, and Google are evil. There are more tech-literate people around on HN to have noticed and understood this. Google have become utterly hideous.
The NYT should publish corrections for factually incorrect reporting because it is what separates them from fraudulent pretend news sources such as Fox and CNBC which are simply garbage to be treated as lies until proven otherwise by anyone sane of any political persuasion. The NYT wants to be better than that.
Based on your comment, I, and I'm sure many others, would have quickly countered by pointing out that it shouldn't matter who you hire provided you have a competent and passionate ombudsman to rein in your inadequacies as a company. However, the link I've provided shows that they fired (without replacement) their ombudsman in 2017. This certainly supports your argument.
Okay, I'm open to hearing this - I've certainly noticed a decrease in quality (vs quantity - NYT still leads there) vs, say, the Washington Post.
> They hire fresh out SJW types
I'm not even sure what this means. I'm used to seeing "SJW" as an attack label that is absent actual meaning, similar to "snowflake" or "libtard", stemming from groups stauchly biased themselves. Are you using it here as an attack based on political belief, or do you have some more nuanced substantive meaning? The rest of your comment doesn't expand on this "epiphany" so I'm left uncertain as to your argument.
That's a pretty broad definition that almost includes religious people on the right wing of the spectrum, and that's pretty much what I would say is the only difference between a Social Justice Warrior and a Religious Justice Warrior--the source of where they validate their brand of morality. Other than that, they are approximately identical in both their methods and the extent to which they are damaging to liberal democracy.
I recognize that this is probably not a very common definition, and your point about SJW being a meaningless insult is likely the correct one.
Take a look at this Joe Rogan + Johnathon Haidt podcast clip that talks about SJW cultural origins in northeastern and western elite liberal arts colleges:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2e9VYf9FKHo
NOTE: Jonathan David Haidt is an American social psychologist and Professor of Ethical Leadership at New York University's Stern School of Business (not a crackpot is my point).
You see downstream echo's of this hyper virtue signaling subculture now in the NYT since much of thier journalism is fresh outs with little real world experience outside their bubble.
I'm a centrist libertarian if you must qualify my argument with my position on the spectrum. In my opinion, I find that classic liberal have a very hard mental block acknowledging that even their own side of the coin can have a toxic extremist end. One that will NOT look and behave like the toxic extremes on the right, but the outcome is the largely negative in the same manor. As Jonathan Haidt in that clip says, they often write it off or are unaware of the problem.
Everything you noted is accurate, and is reflected in recent high-profile hires at NYT (Sarah Jeong the most recent). All organizations can go through preference cascades like this, where hiring for certain views becomes self reinforcing to the point where the organization doesn't even realize it has a bias toward them. It can be especially acute when the views are activist in nature, and signaling alignment with them is how to achieve in-group status. Frankly this is kind of a boring observation - it's basic organizational psychology, which Professor Haidt notes on several occasions.
Fox News in the run-up to the Iraq War is another great example of this. Every single talking-head they had on aligned with their internal bias toward invasion.
Hiring journalists with a strong homogenous political agenda is a poor way to produce neutral, fact-based reporting.
Have you considered the possibility that these SJW's are actually representative of today's youth? If they are, shouldn't NYT be hiring even more of them?
I really don't care about what the backgrounds of Journalists are, as long as they adhere to the principles of journalism (honesty, a desire to question authority and find the truth at all costs etc.).
That could not be further from the truth. The phenomena is very localized and manifests from confluence of factors that HAS been studied scientifically:
It would be like going back in time and saying the youth of the Communist Revolution or the youth of the Iranian Revolution were just “representative of todays youth.” The answer would be: yes, some of them, and look how that turned out for the rest. We can’t conceive of that sort of backward progression in american freedom because we have never experienced it. You have to call out negative toxic ideologies both right AND left.
I agree with your second statement, but instead you of journalists you get activist masquerading as journalists.
The NYT (and others) should in fact be striving to hire less employees with any kind of agenda (whether they be 'SJWs' or anyone else).
Person A will complain that "SJW types" are being hired, the complaint being that they are biased against the truth.
Person B will complain that "SJW types" AREN'T being hired, the complaint being that people biased against the truth are being hired instead.
I don't know the answers, but I do think the "let's present both sides" of journalism has left journalism doing a terrible job of effectively presenting the truth. Finding a path that embraces objective reporting AND denies efforts to exploit the weaknesses of systems designed to promote objectivity is something we've not figured out yet.
That solidarity cannot be enforced was a lecture learned from the failures of communism. It was used as an oxymoron in a similar way. Social justice warriors did not convince anyone, they started crusades against dissidents.
But it went downhill form there as people started accusing everyone in favor of equality as social justice warrior. As a result others started to self-identify as such. It has been a train of reactionary conduct since then.
NYT has dove so deep into identity politics, opinion, agenda, and editorial that it's very hard to imagine their actual legitimate journalistic/reporting division is not being negatively impacted and influenced.
Opinion and editorial are explicitly not part of the newsroom and are published in a different section under a different heading. You may have some problems with the people they hire as opinion commentators but hiring opinionated commentators is absolutely part of the job of a good newspaper. Lefty types regularly make fun of NYT's conservative and centrist commentators, so it's not like they're loved by the left either.
For instance, I detest many of the WSJ's editorial stances but freely admit that they do some very good journalism, which I admire.
The NYT is not unblemished - cough cough the Iraq War cough cough Judith Miller cough, ahem.
Do you have some examples of this?
On Bret Stephens: https://splinternews.com/by-all-means-tell-me-more-milk-boy-...
On Bari Weiss: https://splinternews.com/the-new-york-times-is-shipping-bari...
On Thomas Friedman: https://splinternews.com/thomas-friedman-goes-full-fascist-a...
On Ross Douthat: https://splinternews.com/nyt-columnist-who-wanted-to-ban-por...
On Liz Mair: https://splinternews.com/new-york-times-allows-seattle-born-...
Everything tagged with "New York Times": https://splinternews.com/tag/new-york-times
I know people who work at the NYT. They're absolutely smart enough to know the difference.
I also know people who work at the NYT who share this view. Maybe it's our priors having more influence on our thought than we think, but NYT owners are the among the most wealthy so I tend to believe basic psychological principles/people acting in their own interest is what is closest to truth.
Read the follow up tweets for some more context.
I'm a liberal, and happen to watch Ben Shapiro (an Othodox Jewish lawyer who records a conservative podcast) and follow Lauren Southern (the filmmaker who looks at people smuggling and illegal immigration, who directed the film 'Borderless') - both are mentioned in the 'online radicalisation' piece above.
Other fairly boring, obviously non-alt-right sources mentioned in the piece are Milton Friedman (who won a Nobel Prize for Economics) and Jordan Peterson.
Those are all very obviously non-alt-right, but included in what would seem to be a rather shady attempt to smear non-leftist sources.
I haven't heard of the people you mention.